Cover Page
The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/23437 holds various files of this Leiden University
dissertation.
Author: Alsulami, Mohammed S.H.
Title: Iranian Orientalism : notions of the other in modern Iranian thought
Issue Date: 2014-02-05
CHAPTER IX
Conclusion
This chapter consists of two parts: general remarks on what has been discussed
throughout the thesis, followed by an epilogue in which I shall show how a number of
the modern Iranian writers who have been the subject of analysis in this study had
changed their ideas, in various degrees, in regard to the Arab Other, its language, culture
and its relationship with Persians during the medieval era.
It is also important to indicate that it was impossible to give a full and detailed
description of the period in which every writing has its place, because many writings
show the influence of several theories and views. It was also impossible to refer to all of
the writers and intellectuals of each period or wave discussed in the thesis, especially
during the Pahlavi dynasty, where we come across many writers who had similar ideas
and ways of thinking. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that not all Iranian authors
were given to such anti-Arab and anti-Islamic discourse. On the contrary, certain writers
and intellectuals were quite objective in their dealings with the Arab Other, its custom
and culture. A number of examples have been discussed in this study. Yet it is important
to emphasize that these writers were very limited in number compared to the
mainstream of the period, nor were they outspoken in their condemnation of such
negative descriptions of the Arab Other, particularly when the anti-Arab movement was
at its peak.
Finally, it must be recalled that during the period covered by this study there
were two types of nationalism in Iran: political nationalism, which appeared for a short
time during the Constitutional Revolution and the era of Muhammad Mosadeq in early
the 1950s, and romantic nationalism, which lasted for longer than the political form. It
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
was the romantic nationalists who were persistent in presenting the Otherness of the
Arab so negatively.
General Remarks
The Self-Other notion plays a vital role in constructing national identities, in building
nation-states and in forming and presenting a unique Self, different from and superior to
the Other(s). It is through the Other, especially represented as negative and inferior, that
the Self expresses itself, emphasizing its brightness in contrast to the darkness and
negativity of the Other, in order to prove its superiority, in some cases to a third party,
what we might call another Other. In late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Iran,
the national culture, the values of the past and certain carefully selected, misused or
even fabricated historical events and national figures from ancient times were used
and/or abused to reconstruct, redefine and present anew a modern Iranian Self-identity,
with great support from nineteenth-century European linguistic and racial theories.
Taking into consideration these notions, themes and concepts, this study has
chronologically and systematically traced, investigated and analysed the idea of the
Arab Other in modern Iranian thought.
Eighteenth and nineteenth-century Western ideas made a significant contribution
to modern Iranian conceptions, images and representations of the Self and the Other.
The observations of Sir William Jones of similarities between languages and his
consequent grouping of those languages into families, as well as the ensuing theories,
such as that of a racial (blood) relationship between the speakers of similar languages,
resulted in Aryan race theory and the notion of the superiority of one race over others,
all of which led, very broadly, to a new interpretation or assumption of the Self and
accordingly its relation to the Other. Certain European writers and Orientalists such as
Ernest Renan and Max Müller developed such racial ideas and wrote about the
relationship between the West and certain nations of the East, especially in Central
Asia, the Indian subcontinent and Iran, which they represented as being the cradle of the
Aryan race. They depicted these areas, their culture, history and archaeological sites as
constituting a lost or forgotten past which had been rediscovered and needed to be taken
care of.
246
CONCLUSION
The contact of some Iranians with European societies and their familiarity with
Western social, political and economic values and themes guided them to re-evaluate or
compare the conditions in their country with those of the West and to perceive Iran as
backward in all respects. The European Enlightenment and Romantic ideas about the
Orient, Iran and India in particular played a vital role in establishing the idea among
certain Iranian romanticists of a need to rediscover themselves, their homeland, its
culture and heritage, as well as the romanticized past as presented in the Orientalist
scholarship of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The outcome of these
various activities was to enhance the position of Iran and raise the Iranian sense of
national consciousness in the modern sense and a belief in its superiority over
surrounding nations and groups on one hand, allied with a notion of racial equality with
Europeans on the other, generating a sense of autonomy. A number of factors
contributed greatly to the appearance of an anti-Arab movement among Iranian
nationalists. These included the translation into Persian of many Orientalist works, such
as John Malcolm’s History of Persia, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, Voltaire’s
History of the Russian Empire Under Peter the Great, and George Rawlinson’s History
of the Sasanian Kings of Persia; a familiarity with the racial and Romantic ideas of
Europeans such as Alexander Dumas and Bogle Corbet; the presence in Iran of some
Orientalists; and the spread of Western ideas about the ancient history of the country
(mostly based on unreliable sources and mythical accounts), stressing the racial link
between Iranians and European nations on one hand, while emphasizing the differences
between Iranians and Semitic people, Arabs in particular, on the other.
The anti-Arab movement in Iran during the period covered by this research went
through four main stages: the period of establishment during the second half of the
nineteenth century; the period of institutionalization during the period between World
War I and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925; the stage of implementing
in the literary production of the period the ideas which had emerged during the first two
periods, a stage which can be called the peak of this movement; and finally the stage of
using anti-Arab sentiments and romantic ideas about the Iranian Self in historiography,
marking the beginning of the decline of the negative notion of the Arab Other in modern
Iranian thought.
247
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
This research has shown that the first anti-Arab movement in modern Iran
appeared during the second half of the nineteenth century, driven by Orientalist theories
of the time and a strong nationalistic attraction to the pre-Islamic history of Iran. This
first wave was instigated by Fath-‘Alī Ākhūndzādih and Mīrzā Jalāl al-Dīn Qājār, son
of the Qājār king, Fath-‘Alī Shah. The third person who contributed greatly to shaping
this movement was Mīrzā Āqā-Khān Kirmānī, who was influenced by the work of
Ākhūndzādih. These Iranian nationalists were fascinated by the European Other and
recognized it as a type of “god”. They accepted Western ideas and theories as absolute
facts and adopted them unquestioningly in their works.
The writers of this wave showed hostility against Arabs, Arabic and Islamic
values and culture, while, simultaneously, glorifying and propagating ancient Iranian
religions such as Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, as well as pre-Islamic Iranian values
and culture. By glorifying the pre-Islamic social, political and cultural elements and
turning the rudiments of history and the kings of an earlier era into icons of the new
nationalism, one objective of such writers was to undermine the dynasty of their own
time by contrasting it unfavourably with its glorious forerunners and holding it
responsible for the nation’s disgraceful decline. Such writers criticized Iranian society
for being devoted to Arabic culture and praising some Arabs such as the Shiite Imams.
In addition, since they yearned for their pre-Islamic heritage, language and culture, such
writers easily fell in the double trap of adopting an aggressively racist attitude to the
Arab Other while glorifying whatever was attributed to the ancient era, however grossly
exaggerated (or even fabricated, such as Dasātīr) and the accounts of some Indian
Zoroastrians and Orientalists. With no attempt at verification, they used such sources in
their works and presented them as wholly factual. In addition, the tendency of Jalāl alDīn Qājār and several others to use pure Persian words or what they called “pārsīsarih” or “bi ghish nivīsī” was not to sophisticate their works, but a mark of the
influence of their nationalistic feelings or their anti-Arab attitudes.648
For different reasons, however, the writers of the first generation were had no
large audience among Iranian intellectuals of the period and their ideas inspired very
limited enthusiasm in Iranian society. One reason for disregarding them can be found in
648 M. Ājudānī, yā marg yā tajaddud, Tehran: Akhtarān, 1387/ 2008, p. 66.
248
CONCLUSION
the political nationalism which appeared in Iran in the last two decades of the nineteenth
century, resulting in the 1891 tobacco boycott and the Constitutional Revolution at the
turn of the century.
Although a few examples of the promotion of ancient Iranian glories and antiArabic sentiment can be found in the literary production of the Constitutional
Revolution period, such as the poetry of Ishqī, it cannot be seen as a mainstream
phenomenon of the period. Instead, the dominant sentiment of the period can be
described as anti-Western and anti-imperial, while limited examples of anti-Arabism in
this period can be understood in the context of the struggle against dictatorship, the
strength of the clergies and the conflict between clerical and secular forces. Thus,
although the images of Arabs presented in the works of this period are similar to those
of the first (nineteenth-century) wave and the post-war period, they differed from them
in many ways, including the environment in which such works were produced and the
dominance of political nationalism rather than cultural or Romantic nationalism. In
other words, they appeared during an anti-colonial movement and had few if any
cultural or racial connotations.
The significant roles of Indian Parsis (Zoroastrians) during this period, in
cultivating and advancing anti-Arab and anti-Islamic sentiments amongst Iranian
romanticists and reformists must not be neglected. There was a kind of Zoroastrian
chain which was as old as the modern anti-Arab movement itself. From the beginning,
the Indian Zoroastrian Maneckji, who was sent by the Society for the Amelioration of
the Conditions of Zoroastrians Living in Persia, had a strong relationship with Mīrzā
Jalāl al-Dīn Qājār, who introduced him to Ākhūndzādih; these three formed a coalition
with the aim of rescuing Iran from its poor political, social and economic conditions.
When Maneckji died, another Indian Zoroastrian was sent to Iran to continue the
mission. This chain continued until the 1930s and its members were deeply involved in
Iranian affairs, contributing to the Constitutional Revolution, the coup d’état of 1921
and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty. They also participated in establishing
some schools in different Iranian cities, in some of which courses about ancient Iran and
the Islamic conquest were taught. Many of those who studied in such schools or
followed courses taught by these Zoroastrians later held high positions in the
249
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
government of Rizā Shah, who himself had a relationship with a member of this chain,
namely the Indian Zoroastrian Ardashir Reporter. The Iranian poet and writer Ibrāhīm
Pūrdāvūd also played an essential role in advocating what became known as
Zaradushtīgarī (propagating Zoroastrianism) in Iran, establishing and teaching courses
on ancient Iran at Tehran University, as well as publishing and translating several books
on Zoroastrianism, building a strong relationship with the Indian Parsis and expressing
strong anti-Arab sentiments in his poetry and essays.
The failure of the Constitutional Revolution, the failure to achieve a fully
independent Iran during or after World War I marked a turning point in the cultural
concerns of some Iranian nationalists. This tendency clearly began directly after the
war. Nationalists and modernists including Taqīzādih, Kāzimzādih, Pūrdāvūd and
Jamālzādih revived the ideas of the earlier generation and popularized them through
Persian journals published in Berlin such as Kāvih, Irānshahr and Frangistān, whose
main focus was directed towards Iranian national identity, nationalism and building a
new Iranianness upon ancient culture and values. European culture, development and
progress were presented as the ideal model for Iran to catch up with the advanced world.
It has been shown how such journals played a vital role in spreading the ideas of
Ākhūndzādih and Kirmānī amongst the masses, being distributed among Iranians not
only in the West but also inside Iran and in other countries such as Turkey, Iraq, the
Philippines and India. More importantly, the journals emphasized Iranianness, the
reconstruction of Iranian identity and features of the Iranian people such as their racial
talent and their close relation with European nations. Furthermore, this was the period
of the adoption of most of the theories and notions of Orientalist scholarship by the
Iranian press and what can be considered academic and semi-academic journals. This
admiration of Orientalism and the adoption of its ideas about the Arabs and Islam, as
well as the ancient history of Iran, goes in parallel with the glorification and
romanticisation of the ancient era, presenting it as the ideal model to be followed in
modern times. The writers of this period who were not satisfied with the policies of the
government in Tehran were completely aware of the concepts of nationalism and statebuilding and the elements needed for formulating and enacting such ideas. Their only
obstacle was that being in the diaspora, they could not do much to move from the status
of theorization towards implementation of their ideas on the ground.
251
CONCLUSION
Although the ideas of these Berlinians reached a much larger audience than those
of their nineteenth-century counterparts, they would have no concrete influence without
the enthusiasm of Rizā Shah in turning such ideas into a kind of national project,
encouraging the Berlinians to return home and pursue their aims under the supervision
and support of the new government. During this period, Iranian nationalists and
modernists called for comprehensive reform in the country and developed a device for
it. In particular, they sought to reform the Persian alphabet, purge the Persian language
of foreign elements, Arabic in particular, change the dress code and adopt Western
concepts and values. Influenced by Western ideas about Persia, these Iranian
nationalists and secularists dismissed all Persian literature, with the exception of
Firdowsī, whom they saw as a national icon, while the Shāh-nāmih became the national
epic. For many Iranian writers and intellectuals, it became a historical account of
ancient Iran and the Islamic conquest. Indeed, the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty
and the affection of the new ruler were based on its wholesale acceptance.
For the ancient history of Iran, its culture and values, combined with the
restrictions he imposed on clerics and his suppression of certain Islamic values,
provided ideal conditions for the ideas of Iranian nationalists and modernists to gain
ground, the results being a strongly nationalistic and sometimes chauvinistic idea of the
Self and manifold harsh attacks on the Arab Other, its language, culture and customs.
The only difference between the nationalist project of Kāvih and Irānshahr and that of
the Pahlavi dynasty is that the former came from individuals (i.e. from below), while the
latter was nationalism from above, implemented at state level.
Prior to Rizā Shah’s reign, Iranians used to introduce and identify themselves
according to their home cities, villages and tribes, the fact which Rizā Shah wanted to
change. The aim was that nativism was superseded by a wider collective identity, a
single Iranian political sovereignty and nationality. In this way, nationalism
outdistanced all rival political ideologies. The demand for such nationalism in Iran was
not limited to the elite, but extended to liberal and reformist members of the
intelligentsia such as Taqīzādih, Bahār, Furūghī and Ahmad Kasravī, who at one time or
250
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
another approved of Rizā Shah’s national policy and recognised the necessity of a
powerful central government.649
During Rizā Shah’s reign, Iranian nationalists continued using or abusing the
Aryan race theory and the Indo-European language family linking them to Europe in
order to send a message that unlike other nations of the region, their country deserved
the respect and recognition of the West. The only new factor which advanced this
theory among Iranian nationalists and officials was the relationship with Nazi Germany
and the emphasis on the blood relationship between the two nations, presenting Iran as
the homeland of the Aryan race. In addition, it was in this period, and closely linked to
this relationship, that various Iranian national projects were established, most of which
have had some sort of link to the construction of a national identity, the presentation of
the Self and the representation of the Other. The outcomes of Rizā Shah’s national
project were the elimination from Persian of loanwords, Arabic in particular, the change
of name of the state to emphasize the link to the Aryan race and the Indo-European
mentality, and the replacement of the Islamic lunar calendar with a Persian solar
calendar. In addition, the Shah issued a farmān (decree) banning the chador and hijab,
closing schools using minority languages such as Arabic and Turkish as their medium
of instruction, and launching a project to Persianize ethnic minorities in the country. All
of these steps were aimed at constructing a new nation-state upon Persian culture and
values, regardless of the ethnic diversity of Iranian society.
The Iranian nationalists of the first half of the twentieth century used culture,
language and history as ideological tools for the construction of a single modern
national identity which was clearly secular rather than Islamic. The placing of Aryan
race and Indo-European language at the heart of the identity of the state has strong
implications of the exclusion of non-Persian-speaking and non-Aryan groups in the
country. Furthermore, the lack of a clear line between internal Other and external Other
was one of the obvious weak points in the works of Iranian nationalists; when they
talked about Arabs or Turks, it is not clear whether they included the ethnic Arab and
Azarī minorities in Iran or drew a line between them and external groups. If they did
mean non-Iranian Arabs and Turks, one must ask whether it was convincing to limit
649 See S. Akhavi, “Iran,” in Political parties of the Middle East and North Africa, F. Tachau, ed.,
London: Mansell, 1994, pp. 165-70.
252
CONCLUSION
such images and notions to the external Other or whether it was merely an attempt to
avoid inflaming the corresponding Iranian ethnic minorities. The result, in any case, was
a major failure in drawing or at least highlighting this difference between the internal
and external ethnic or racial Others.
It is in this environment that the new generation of Iranian writers and
intellectuals wrote short stories, novels, historical fiction, poetry and plays in which
they characterized the Arab Other with very negative and sometimes racial attitudes. In
this period too, facts and fictions became one, and then became a framework for history
and new identity. It is evident that the young writers of this period were greatly
influenced by this environment. They were taught in an education system which was
reconstructed in order to suit the cultural policy of the time. Therefore, the themes of the
literary outcome of this period revolved around the civilized, moral, superior Self and
the barbarous, immoral, inferior Other. The case of Sādiq Hidāyat was a very clear
example here. Apart from his fictional works, in which he pictured the Arab Other very
negatively, his treatment of the works of the medieval poet and philosopher, ‘Umar
Khayyām, is the best example of how Hedayat was influenced by modern theories. He
coloured the quatrains and the philosophy of Khayyām with concepts such as Aryanism
and anti-Semitism, two theories which were widely known and influential during the
period.
The final phase of this movement was historiographic. The nationalistic ideas
became a type of framework for new writers of history too. The ideas of the Orientalist
schools, which were received and adopted by several Iranian writers and intellectuals,
became a framework for new writers of history and literature.
The ideal images of ancient Persia, the representation of the Islamic conquest,
images of Arabs and the issue of Aryan and Semitic racial differences had an evident
influence on some historiography of the period. For instance, the case study of
Zarrīnkūb’s works and the dramatic changes from Two Centuries of Silence to Kārnāmih-yi islam illustrates the nationalistic environment in which the writer grew up and
was educated, followed by a progressive alteration in his view of various historical
events, especially involving the Arab-Iranian relationship during the early Islamic
centuries. The enthusiasm of the young nationalist graduate to write about the history of
253
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
his country led him to rely uncritically on certain easily available sources. Soon,
however, he noticed some of the inaccuracies in the first edition of Two Centuries,
which forced him to rewrite and reconstruct his book. Zarrīnkūb was also brave enough
to acknowledge that his nationalist feelings were the main reason for the inaccuracy of
his earlier opinions. The change in the author’s views was not limited to the publication
of a second edition of the book, but led him to write The Islamic History of Iran,
representing further major changes in his ideas. Finally, in Kār-nāmih-yi islam, the
reader finds a new realistic and patriotic Iranian historian who still loves his country, its
past and present, yet without attacking the Other and more importantly very critical in
terms of using different sources, both old and modern works on the pre- and Islamic
history of Iran.
It is very important to mention here that in this context, the period after World
War II and the defeat of Nazism marked a dramatic decline in interest in nationalistic
history. The rejection of the myth of racial superiority led the Darwinist, racialist and
aggressive writings of the previous period to realistic and logical conclusions, a
development that was unthinkable before the end of World War II. This shift may, in
one way or another, have influenced the changing of Zarrīnkūb’s ideas and the
consequent decline of nationalistic history writing in Iran. However, we should bear in
mind that these developments, which took place mostly in the West, were bound to
inspire Iranian writers of the same period, simply because of the way in which Western
movements such as the Enlightenment and racial ideas, as has been indicated in
previous chapters, were relatively swiftly introduced to Iranian writers and intellectuals.
Furthermore, the study has shown the similarities between the Shu’ūbiyya
movement of the ninth to eleventh centuries and the modern anti-Arab movement of
some Iranian nationalists and reformists, which can be called the ‘neo-Shu’ūbiyya’.
Several Iranian nationalists and reformists combined, in modern time, the images of the
Arab Other found in Shu‘ūbiyya movement of medieval era with the Aryanism and the
superiority of the Aryan race in their treatments of the Semitic Arab Other and its
Otherness. In other words, apart from the racial Aryan-Semitic difference between
Iranians and Arabs, the modern writers used the images of the old Shu’ūbiyya with
almost no changes or new images being invented. Despite the fact that scholars cannot
254
CONCLUSION
agree whether the early Shu’ūbiyya was a kind of national Iranian movement or simply
a literary controversy between Arab and Persian poets and writers, it is important here
to emphasize that the modern Iranian nationalists saw the early movement as a pure
Iranian nationalistic attack on the Arab-Muslim government. More importantly, such
writers viewed the Iranian military and religious uprisings of the medieval period
against the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties as attempts by Iranian nationalist to revive
the Iranian government which was ended by the Muslim Arabs in the seventh century.
This reception of modern Iranian nationalists of early Shu’ūbiyya and the way in which
it was reflected in their literary works confirms the link that such writers made between
the two movements, despite the very long time separating them. It is also highly
significant that most of the followers of the modern movement could at least read
Arabic, the language of most of the literary production of the early movement, which
supports the claim of their familiarity with the ideas of the Shu‘ūbīs of medieval time,
in addition, of course, to the Shāh-nāmih of Firdowsī, which was written in Persian and
cited frequently in their works, especially those lines which dwell upon Arabs and the
Islamic conquest.
Interestingly enough, we found that the early Shu‘ūbīs were characterized as
Zindīqs (heretics), yearning for old Iranian beliefs and religions, not true Muslims. It
was written of Ākhūndzādih that “his aim is not to turn the population of Iran into
heretics and atheists like him and he does not consider that as a beneficial solution. His
ultimate goal is religious liberalism and Islamic Protestantism”. 650 In addition, it has
been shown that some of those writers who were involved in this anti-Arab movement
and later changed their ideas, described its followers as modern Shu‘ūbīs who hated
Islam and Islamic values and wanted to take revenge for the defeats of Qādisyya and
other battles which the Islamic army won against the Iranians. All of this very clearly
links their ideas to the early Shu’ūbiyya movement.
the Arabs mostly appear as negative personalities whenever they are portrayed in
such texts. Apart from the context, the language used to describe the Arabs and their
language and culture is dramatic and eloquently rhetorical. In this respect,
historiographic and literary approaches appear to unite and supplement each other; there
650 F. Ādamiyyat, Andīshih-hā-yi Mīrzā Fath-‘Alī Ākhūndzādih , p. 220.
255
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
is often a blurred line between writing or rewriting history and fictional works.
Sentimental involvement, identification with the past generations of Iranians and
negative feelings towards the Arabs, who are presented as the root of all misfortunes in
Iranian society, are common in texts of both types.
Most Iranian nationalists who followed this movement ignored the weaknesses
and problems which were causing the Sasanian empire to decline during the period prior
to the Islamic conquest, while also overlooking the development of a golden age of
Islamic civilization, in which many Muslim Iranian scholars played important roles. In
fact, instead of looking for the real reasons behind the backwardness of the country,
including the responsibility of Iranians themselves for this decline, most of those Iranian
nationalists failed to accept that the inhabitants of the country should be held to account,
choosing the easier route of blaming the Arab Other, his language, religion and culture.
In doing so, they absolved themselves from taking the effort to help the country to
overcome the poor conditions from which it was suffering. Furthermore, it became clear
that all this anti-Arab writing was always aimed at the internal situation calling for
changes in Iranian society which no Arab as it were had anything to do with.
It is also remarkable that some Iranian nationalists insisted that the Arab Other had been
the main reason for the longstanding dispute between Persia and the Ottoman Empire.
Although such writers do not give a clear explanation of such claims, it seems that they
specifically referred to the Shiite-Sunnite conflict between the two countries dating
from the foundation of the Safavid dynasty in the sixteenth century. The Arab Other
was blamed here, because the Arabs had brought Islam to these two countries, leading
several Iranian nationalists, as has been discussed in this study, to characterize it as the
religion of the Arabs.
Interestingly enough, we find that most of those Iranian nationalists who wrote
about Aryan (Persian-Iranian) race and its superiority over the Semitic (Arab) or
Turkish races, or who called for the purifying of the Persian language had some
Semitic/Arab or Turkic ethnic background. For example, Mīrzā Jalāl al-Dīn Qājār and
Ākhūndzādih were of Azarī/Turkish background, while the names of Sayyid Hasan
Taqīzādih and Sayyid Ahmad Kasravī clearly indicate an Arab background since the
256
CONCLUSION
title “Sayyid” means that lineage of the person who goes back to the prophet
Muhammad.
It should be emphasized that not all Iranian authors used such anti-Arab and antiIslamic discourse in their works. On the contrary, some writers and intellectuals were
entirely objective in their dealings with the Arab Other, its customs and culture. A
number of examples have been discussed in this study. However, it is also significant
that there were very few such writers compared with those in the anti-Arab mainstream
of the period and that they were not outspoken in their condemnation of the negative
portrayals of the Arab Other, particularly at the height of the anti-Arab movement.
Changing Ideas
While some Iranian nationalists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as
Ākhūndzādih, Kirmānī, Pūrdāvūd and Hidāyat, remained faithful to their ideas and
negative attitudes towards the Arabs and Islam until the end of their lives, it is
interesting that over time, several other Iranian nationalists and modernists radically
changed their minds concerning the Arabs, their language and culture, revising their
earlier calls for changes to the Persian alphabet or the purifying of the language from
foreign words. In some cases, this transformation in ideas was gradual, mostly during
the Pahlavi dynasty and around the mid-twentieth century. These changes occurred not
because of ideological influence on such writers, but mostly because of the decline of
the Iranian Romantic nationalism or even chauvinism of the first two decades or so of
the Pahlavi dynasty. In other words, I believe that the writers and intellectuals who
changed their ideas did so simply because Romantic nationalism, which had fostered
anti-Islamic and anti-Arab sentiments, had been sponsored by the head of state, Rizā
Shah, and with his forced abdication in 1941, romantic nationalism ceased to be as
influential. Secondly, the events of the World War II and the failure of the Nazi
ideology directed their focus to a kind of patriotism or nascent political nationalism
which became clearer in the 1950s, with Muhammad Mosadeq’s nationalization of
Iranian oil and its aftermath. A close reading of the ideas and thoughts of many Iranian
intellectuals and writers of the period leading up to this nationalization shows that
Iranian nationalism took a different direction: ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’ components
replaced the ‘dictatorship’ and the absolute and arbitrary power of Muhammad Rizā
257
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
Shah (r. 1941-1979). More importantly, shifts in the political arena and strong anticolonialist feelings turned against the British colonialist as the prominent Other of the
Iranian Self. The bankruptcy of Romantic Iranian nationalist thinking that had been so
prominent during Rizā Shah’s reign made some authors review their earlier ideas,
showing a great increase in political and cultural wisdom and maturity.
One Iranian nationalist who changed his mind on various levels was Sayyid Hasan
Taqīzādih, who as shown above had promoted the wholesale adoption of Western
culture, called for reform of the Persian alphabet and expressed many nationalistic ideas
during his time in Berlin. Later, in 1947, he gave a lecture entitled Luzūm-i hifz-i fārsī
fasīh (The Need to Preserve the Eloquence of the Persian Language), explicating his
opposition to the principles behind the establishment of the Farhangistān (Language
Academy), founded in 1935 to purge Persian of alien words, particularly Arabic ones.
Taqīzādih stresses the “poverty of the Persian language” and the “richness of the Arabic
language”, arguing against removing Arabic words, especially those long used in
Persian and common in the daily conversations of Iranians:
The old Persian language, even Pahlavi, where books in it are available, was not
broad and rich. It is very likely that it was quite restricted, and apparently did not
have many books and writings; otherwise more than this small amount would
have reached us. The story of the Arabs’ destruction of Persian books is nothing
but a pure myth, and it is very probable that the influence of Arabic words in
Dari is more due to the restricted and limited nature of this language. There are
not many words bespeaking the knowledge and wisdom in the time of the
Sasanians, and there exist many reasons for this shortage.651
It is obvious here that Taqīzādih was in favour of preserving all words of Arabic
and Turkish origin common in both standard and colloquial Persian, while placing strict
conditions on borrowing foreign (i.e. Western) words: if there is no appropriate
equivalent in Arabic or Persian for such words, a new one should be invented. “Here
again”, Taqīzādih emphasizes, “we prefer the existing easier and more familiar Arabic
words that are common in Egypt and Syria, or which exist in old Persian books, over
651 H. Taqīzādih, “Luzūm-i hifz-i fārsī-i fasīh,” Yādigār, issue v, No. 6 (1367/1948), p. 25, cited in I.
Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran, p. 244.
258
CONCLUSION
unfamiliar Pre-Islamic Persian words or invented words, except in some rare
instances”.652 Taqīzādih gives a remarkable explanation for the hostility towards Arabic
words, asserting that although the Arabs put an end to the Iranian government, they did
not eradicate the Iranian people, introducing a religion based on equality without
favouring Arabs over ‘Ajam, while a number of needed words entered Persian. He
criticizes the hostility of some Iranians towards Arabic words in Persian, emphasizing
that there is no sensitivity towards Greek loanwords, so it is not necessary to seek
hostility with Arabs or revenge for Seyavash’s blood from Persianized Arabic words.
This enmity arising from a thousand-year-old war is not reasonable, he argues, but some
Iranians do not want to forget about the Arab hatred and the defeats of Qādisyya, Jwlā
and Nahāvand (battles between the Islamic and Sasanian armies), seeking revenge
against all Persian words of Arabic origin. 653 Furthermore, he declares that the
opposition towards Arabic words was seen as part of their kind of nationalism, aligned
with hostility towards Arabs and Turks, and with a supposed kinship with Western
Aryans.654 Interestingly enough, this post-hoc explanation is very similar to the way in
which Humā’ī interprets the actions of the ninth-century Shu‘ūbīs, remarking that
whenever strife occurred on the Arabian peninsula, the Iranians set out to suppress it
with harsh military action against the Arab rebels, as if taking revenge for the defeat of
al-Qādisyya, revealing an underlying hatred of the Arabs.
This attitude of Taqīzādih markedly contradicts his ideas expressed in Berlin two
decades earlier, in his journal Kāvih, reflecting the nationalistic and ethnic feelings of
those Iranians who were greatly influenced by the racial theories of the time in Europe
in general and Germany in particular:
Many books in the Pahlavi language on history, stories and tales as well as
religious tales undoubtedly existed in the Sasanian dynasty and particularly
close to its end. The names of these books are known to us because they were
still accessible in the early Islamic centuries, and information about them was
documented in the classic Arabic books or through their translation into Arabic
652 H. Taqīzādih, “Luzūm-i hifz-i fārsī-i fasīh,” p. 29.
653 H. Taqīzādih, “dar mauzū’ akhz-i tamadun-i khārijī va Āzādī, vatan, milat, tasāhul,” in Chahār
resale dar tajaddud, millīat, dīn va Āzādī, H.K. Sadr, ed., Paris: Khāvarān, 1389/2010, pp. 108-9.
654 Ibid., p. 89.
259
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
or Persian (most of those translations also having perished with only their names
remaining).655
Furthermore, in the 1920s, Taqīzādih wrote about the necessity of educating the
Iranian masses. To achieve this he called for the writing system to be simplified, which
would necessitate replacing the current Persian alphabet with the Latin one.656 Then,
many years later, he recognised the problems for Iran inherent in adopting the Latin
alphabet, so that “during the last twenty years of his life, [Taqīzādih] was totally against
the idea of changing the Persian alphabet”.657
On a cultural level, Taqīzādih criticizes the unrealistic Iranian Self-admiration and
hyperbolic praise of the past, which damages the Iranian image for foreigners.
Taqīzādih maintains that “over-praising of Iranians and the Iranian past by some
Europeans, such as Orientalists and others who have visited Iran and we [Iranians] ask
them about their own opinion [about Iran], they, in front of our eyes, praise us to the
extent of mocking us and laugh at our self-complacency”.658 Whether or not he was
right in preferring Arabic words over pre-Islamic Persian ones, and whether we agree or
disagree with his ideas about terms coined by the Academy, the interest of the study in
hand lies in the changes in Taqīzādih’s ideas over time and in the decline of the strong
and sometimes chauvinistic attitude towards pre-Islamic Iranian language and culture
which was the trend of the 1920s and 1930s. Taqīzādih maintains that the radical
nationalists, who attributed all the glories of humankind to their own nation and exalted
its virtues above the qualities of other nations, were disproportionate in considering
their nation the root of all civilization and learning; they would simply prove their own
ignorance, even if the masses were seduced by their claims. 659 Here again, one can
easily point to the replacement of this trend by another type of nationalism similar to
that of the Constitutional Revolution period, by which I mean a political, not ethnic or
Romantic, nationalism.
655 Kaveh, issue 5, No. 10, p. 12, cited in I. Parsinejad, A History of Literary Criticism in Iran, p. 246.
656 D.N. Wilber, Reza Shah Pahlavi, pp. 160-69 and A. Karimi-Hakkak, “Language reform movement
and its language: the Case of Persian,” in The Politics of Language Purism, B.H. Jernudd and J.M.
Hapiro, eds., Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1989, p. 100.
657 M. Mīnavī, Naqd-i hāl, pp. 529-30.
658 H. Taqīzādih, “Luzūm-i hifz-i fārsī-i fasīh,” p. 38.
659 H. Taqīzādih, “dar mauzū’ akhz-i tamadun-i khārijī va Āzādī, vatan, milat, tasāhul,” p.88.
261
CONCLUSION
On the other hand, it is very interesting that Taqīzādih put the medieval
Shu‘ūbiyya and modern extreme and racial nationalism at the same level. For him, both
movements must be seen as diverging from a reliable scientific approach to research. 660
He warns against the falsity of the new radical nationalism, which resembles that of the
Shu‘ūbiyya in the early centuries of Islam; this is known as chauvinism in European
languages and as “millat bāzī” in Persian. He insists that
this kind of movement is mostly built upon national egotism and selfglorification, a plethora of litigious privilege and supremacy over other nations
and a fanatical national pride (the source of which is songs and epics such as
“Deutschland über alles” in Germany, or “We are those who took ransom from
kings” in Iran) This extremism can be linked to Hitler’s German nationalism,
and it is not only far from reason, justice and impartiality, but also causes huge
damage on both national and international levels, leading to danger and radical
hostility between nations.661
Furthermore, Taqīzādih affirms that new Iranian Shu‘ūbīs occasionally attribute
enormous virtues, knowledge and civilization to pre-Islamic Iran, while underestimating
the value and significance of Islamic civilization.662 He declares that although Arabic
has been attacked by the Shu‘ūbīs of modern time and some nationalist politicians, who
distort all aspects of literature and science with their prejudice, they must admit that it
was long ago, in eighth/fifteenth century, that the most famous poet of the Persian
language, Hāfiz Shirazī, wrote:
Although it is not polite to show ones art before the friend,
My tongue is silent but my mouth is full of Arabic.663
More importantly, Taqīzādih looks at Islamic civilization from a perspective
which years before was not the best option to adopt. Taqīzādih emphasizes that there
was no differentiation between being Muslim and being a Turk, Iranian or Arab in the
golden age of Islamic civilization. According to him, religion outweighed ethnicity; all
660
661
662
663
H. Taqīzādih, “Luzūm-i hifz-i fārsī-i fasīh,” p. 30.
H. Taqīzādih, “dar mauzū’ akhz-i tamadun-i khārijī va Āzādī, vatan, milat, tasāhul,” pp. 86-7.
H. Taqīzādih, “Luzūm-i hifz-i fārsī-i fasīh,” p. 32.
M. Menavi, Naqd-i hāl, p. 485.
260
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
Muslims were a single nation, whose academic and literary production was shared
among them without attribution to one race or another.664 He also considers the Islamic
Arab conquest innocent of causing any harm to the people of Iran, arguing that
notwithstanding the ethnic feelings apparent in the ideas of later Iranian intellectuals, it
can be argued objectively that the Islamic and Arab conquest of Iran did not result in a
harmful and irrecoverable disservice simply because it removed a four-hundred-yearold dynasty and weakened an old religion, introducing a new one with countless
advantages, including equality and a well-established system. He maintains that Islam
nurtured a new spirit and a stronger belief in the Iranian people, and that the second
important gift of the Muslim Arabs to Iran was their extraordinarily rich, broad and
complete language.665
To sum up, during his stay in Berlin, Taqīzādih reflected his cultural interests in
Kāvih. In a later period, the reader comprehends Taqīzādih’s ideas about Western
civilization and his advocacy of it as the solution to the poor conditions of his
homeland. Furthermore, Taqīzādih changed his ideas about implementing Western
civilization in Iran, an idea which he pursued for many years while in Berlin. 666 It is
also in this period that his nationalistic ideas and calls for reform of the Persian alphabet
can be found. His later change of mind about Arabic words and the Persian alphabet,
and his attacks on those he called the Shu‘ūbīs of the time, some of whom were his
colleagues at Kāvih, cannot be understood without taking into consideration the newly
emerging tendencies amongst Iranian intellectuals which became very clear following
World War II. This new movement was clearly directed towards another Other, the
imperialistic powers, and resulted in Mosadeq’s coup of 1953.
Another Iranian writer who changed his early ideas was the essayist and short
story writer, Buzurg Alavī. By the end of the nationalistic movement in Iran, Alavī had
recognized this tendency amongst the writers of his time for what it was. Alavī
belonged to a circle with Sādiq Hidāyat, Mujtabā Mīnavī and Massūd Farzād; they
664 H. Taqīzādih, “Luzūm-i hifz-i fārsī-i fasīh,” pp. 30-1.
665 M. Mīnavī, Naqd-i hāl, p. 482.
666 I. Afshar, “Jaraiyan-hayi adabi dar majallat farsi,” Rahnama-yi kitab, issue 20, No. 8-10,
(1356/1977), p. 558. Another member of the group of Berlinians who changed his ideas was the
editor of Irānshahr, who stopped all his political and nationalist activities on the day he decided to
stop publishing his journal in 1927. He left Berlin for Switzerland, where he devoted the rest of his
life to Islamic mysticism and gathered around him number of disciples.
262
CONCLUSION
worked together in that if one wrote something he would share it with the others, and in
some cases they jointly produced some literary works. For example, Hidāyat and Alavī
collaborated on a collection of short stories under the title anirān (Non-Iran) (see
above), while Mīnavī collaborated with Hidāyat in writing Māzyār .667
Alavī sets the narrative of one short story in the Anirān collection approximately
thirteen centuries ago: Arnavaz, the daughter of an Iranian general in Hamadan called
Garzavān, was with her fiancé, Zaravānd, heading to Kufā in Iraq, when they were
separated. Arnavāz was captured by the Arabs and sold as a slave. She married an Arab
and bore him a child. Twelve years later she managed to flee to her hometown with her
son. She fell sick and soon died, having asked her former fiancé on her deathbed to look
after her son and raise him as an Iranian. The story ends with the mixed-race son
proving to have a negative Arab nature and being killed by his pure Iranian wife. Alavī
writes almost fanatically about the Arab Other: “Arab means adversity, barbarism,
bloodshed, plunder and infamy and a thousand other types of barbarity. This is their
creed and law”.668 He declares that “Iran shall never go down under the control of nonIranians. The Greeks and Romans, with all their splendour, knowledge and
accomplishment, paled into insignificance before us. Iran belongs to the Iranians”.669
An interviewer later asked Alavī if fascism had any roots in Iran and why he
linked it to chauvinism. Alavī replied that if fascism existed in Iran in any form, then it
existed in the seeds of chauvinism. These do exist in Iran and thrive on notions such as
the greatest early inventions having occurred in Iran, all great philosophies having
originated there, “no culture par with Iranian culture, or real culture belongs to Iranians
and such farfetched ideas. But loving one’s country that is natural”. 670 When asked
about the existence of Hitler’s fascism in Iran, Alavī rejected this idea by emphasizing
the existence of nationalism and chauvinism, adding that chauvinists were plentiful in
Iran. “I myself would like at least to be a patriot, a nationalist, without being a
667 B. Alavi, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi, p. 61. As a matter of fact, Mujtabā Mīnavī was one of
those Iranian writers who attacked the Arabs, their race and culture in his early writings. As an
introduction to Māzyār by Sādiq Hidāyat, Mīnavī wrote an essay on Māzyār’s life, political
activities and fate, referring to the Muslim army as devilish snake-eaters. S. Hidāyat, Māzyār, p. vi.
668 B. Alavī , Dīv, Dīv, p. 9 and S. Alvi, “Buzurg Alavi’s Writings from Prison,” The Muslim World,
Hartford Seminary Foundation, issue 67, No. 3, p. 207.
669 B. Alavī , Dīv, Dīv, p. 8 and S. Alvi, “Buzurg Alavi’s Writings from Prison,” p. 207.
670 B. Alavi, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi, p. 87.
263
IRANIAN ORIENTALISM
chauvinist. But there’s the rub: where to find them? And one can come up with many
explanations”. Alavī asserted that there were many important Iranian figures who had
been revolutionaries for some time, and who wanted to correct all the ills of the world.
One example was the well-known linguist and essayist ‘Alī Akbar Dihkhudā (18791956), whom Alavī maintains was a gifted poet, but gave up composing poetry in
favour of research; that is, he “took refuge in the past”. The second example Alavī gives
is the politician, poet journalist, and historian, Malik al-Shu‘arā Bahār (1886-1951). To
Alavī, Bahār steeped himself in the pre-Islamic period, in literary history. He insists that
Bahār’s calling was also to write poetry, but he too escaped from the present into the
past.671
Alavī was also a close friend of Taqī Erānī, a contributor to Kāvih during World
War I who also wrote for the journals Irānshahr and Frangistān and who was deeply
charmed by the history and culture of ancient Iran. He chose Alavī to be one of a few
carefully selected editors of a newly founded journal, Dunīyā (The World). Erānī
affirms that due to the prevailing circumstances and because he was young and limited
in knowledge, as is obvious from his articles in Kāvih, Irānshahr and Frangistān, he
was a follower of the zeitgeist and used to write to his friends in fārsī vīzhih (especial
Persian).672
Historians changed their ideas too. Since the rewriting of history came at a later stage
than that of literary works, it took historians a little longer to change their ideas. Chapter
VIII described how Zarrīnkūb’s his ideas changed dramatically between Two Centuries
of Silence and the Islamic History of Iran or Kār-nāmih-yi islam. In the first of these
works, Zarrīnkūb attacked the Muslim Arabs for the way in which Islam was introduced
to the people of Iran, the treatment by the Islamic army of local inhabitants, the attitude
of Arabs towards the language, culture and religion of conquered areas, the alleged
burning of Persian libraries by Muslim soldiers and many other related issues. In the
second book, Zarrīnkūb modified his earlier ideas, acknowledging explicitly or
implicitly the inaccuracy of some of these, exonerating the Muslim Arabs from some of
his accusations and reconsidering his methodology and style. He now rejected as
unproven the claims that Arabs had destroyed Iranian libraries. As to his methodology,
671 Ibid., p. 54.
672 See also J. Behnām, Birlīnī-hā, pp. 70-1.
264
CONCLUSION
began to use primary sources written by Muslim scholars (Arabs and Iranians) and
distanced himself from the Shāh-nāmih of Firdowsī as a reliable historical source. By
the time of the third book, Kār-nāmih-yi islam, Zarrīnkūb had not only stopped
attacking Arabs but now used what he called scientific methodology to test claims made
against Muslim Arabs by some Iranian nationalists, going so far as to accuse the
Sasanian Empire and its soldiers of treating the neighbouring Arabs very badly: “with
such Iranian arrogance and their unjust, rough and contemptible behaviour towards
Arabs, there should be no surprise if those Arabs revolt against the Sasanian
government”.673 This change from attacking the Arabs and their culture to defending
and discharging them from his earlier accusations means that the writer had put aside
the nationalistic ideas which he had learnt during his youth and which had greatly
influenced his earlier writings, now adopting an objective, rational and realistic
approach to his research with the sole aim of seeking truth.
Further Studies
The research in hand could not investigate all of the many sources that might contain
any characterization of the Arab Other. The textbooks of the Pahlavi period should be
investigated in depth in order to demonstrate how such books defined the Iranian Self,
the motherland (vatan) and the Persian language as against the Other. The Iranian mass
media, press and films of the time also deserve close analysis. Thereafter, the period
between the 1950s and the Islamic revolution of 1979, as well as the literary production
since the Islamic revolution, would be very interesting to study. These periods,
particularly the latter, are important because of the slogans which were used,
particularly in the early years of the new regime in Iran, and because of the Iran-Iraq
war of 1980-89. The literary production of this period, especially poetry, contains
dozens of images of the enemy and the land, the race and allies, none of which can be
understood properly without close investigation and analysis.
673 A. Zarrīnkūb, Tārīkh-i Iran ba‘d az Islam, p. 289.
265